Minimum consumption. Maximum freedom.

Category Archives: Happiness

“You have to go broke three times to learn how to make a living”Casey Stengel

If you have the courage to choose the simple life you might have the pleasure of experiencing life without money. I’m not being sarcastic when I say pleasure either.

Hopefully you won’t find your new broke status depressing. Being broke is relative and it doesn’t have to be an unpleasant experience. For example if you are reading this then chances are you are in the top 10% of the World’s wealthiest people. Think about that for a second.

I’ve always maintained that there is nothing wrong with being broke, but there is a gigantic problem if you are depressing or even worse if you are boring to be around.

Trust me, you can have a lot of fun being broke. Especially if your time is your own!

You can make great art, have great sex, and have stimulating conversations with people you normally have no time for. You can play with your kids, spend time with your Mother. You can run. You can read and above all you can be joyous.

It’s all your choice.

I was never happy in my life as a freshly minted corporate mind slave. You can’t experience corporate cowardice everyday without it rubbing off on you. The childish behaviour of corporate life. The parental conversations with an arsehole Boss. The powerlessness and the feelings of helplessness in the face of corporate stupidity. All while trying to stay under the radar of the corporate knife forever looking to make some poor schmuck redundant.

By having the courage to ditch that shitty part of my life I found the key to enjoyment of life.

Freedom.

The freedom to be my own man. The opportunity to carve my own path at whatever time I chose to start in the morning. No more evil alarm clocks or hotel wake up calls from synthetic humans.

By waking up to the madness and crafting a different life experience I have gained the time to find the fun in life that I lost after my University days.

Being broke is not ideal, but just because you are broke it doesn’t mean you have to be boring or depressed. If you find yourself broke it’s a signal to unlock your creativity, to free your spirit, to rise up to the challenge. Trust in providence and stay the course. Things are all going to work out so you may as well adopt the mindset of the penniless aristocrat and have as much fun as you can along the way.

Share this:

Like this:

“Families are struggling against a tide of junk information on junk food”

Diane Abbott

Some of the things that we eat are kind of ridiculous. I guess we don’t really think about it because it is ‘normal’. A strongly reinforced part of our shared cultural narrative aggressively pushed on us by massive agricultural conglomerates. They marketed our parents hard. Right in their blind spot. Healthy kids need calcium, protein and vitamins and boy oh boy can we tell you where to get those

Milk. Full grown cows don’t drink cow’s milk. It is an infant formula for a creature that grows to be 2000 lbs. The thought of sucking on the udder of a cow isn’t appealing. We think we need the calcium (that cow’s got from eating grass) because it’s better than the calcium we get from eating an array of other more nutritious plants.

Take honey. Honey is insect vomit.

Eggs. The period of a chicken. Ewwh!

Meat. The carcass of a dead animal is good for you. Seriously? Give a child a lamb and a banana and you’d be horrified to see that kid tear into the gut of the lamb with her teeth and tear flesh out blood dripping down the front of her pretty white dress. No she’ll play with the lamb and eat the fruit. Why not eat your dog or a cat? What is the difference. But meat tastes good. That’s why most meat is smothered (disguised) by fruit. Tomato sauce, apple puree, orange rind think about it. If you were meant to eat meat your jaw and teeth would look different. You’d have a host of different enzymes in your gut. Why do we call it veal, bacon, steak or pork instead of deer, pig and cow.

When you were 5 years old you most likely loved animals. They fascinated you and they were your friends. What changed?

Chemicals. What is food additive 144 or flavor enhance 621 or thickener 1422? If it isn’t in your pantry or you’d need a triple PhD in food science to pronounce it, then you can probably give it a miss from adding it to your shopping basket.

Share this:

Like this:

“Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy”

David Bohm

Have you ever noticed how many facets of your life are set up to ensure you exist in conflict, isolation, helplessness and fear?

Its like our life as a child and the life that we live as an adult is on some polar continuum. We teach our children to share, to care, to listen, to be kind, to work together and to look for opportunities to help other people.

But, we grow into a dog eat dog world. We compete for rewards, money, jobs, and people to date. We horde toys. We lose trust. We learn hate. We perpetrate violence as the primary solution. Sharing annoys us. It can only be a sign of a failed life. We lend out of pity, not compassion.

Many workplaces preach team work and family values then reward a handful of people at the apex and completely shit on the rest of the workforce. Every year some unlucky souls will lose their livelihood over a few low months. Where is the family values then? The CEO spouts platitudes and positive rhetoric while enveloping their staff in cultures of blame avoidance, self promoting, tattle tailing, assertive and aggressive microcosms. You are alone. Your job is in jeopardy.There are people that will do it for far less money. Work harder or we go off shore. Give up your benefits. Our competitors don’t take holidays. Be afraid. Be our slave.

Meanwhile thanks to our governments and the corporations that own them our communities are breaking down faster than any other time in history. Particularly so in urban areas. Neighbours are civil, but families lead much more private lives. In former times small bands of humans worked together. Through collectivism, mutual aid and mutual support we tamed the wilderness in tightly woven clans and carved out our niche in the environment. Nowadays our news propagandist media tells us that we are alone and in danger. Fire, ISIS, terrorists, robbers, cancer or a car smash is going to get you any minute. The worst part is the constant messaging that you are helpless and change is impossible. The world can only be this way. Wealth bubbling up. The middle class slipping into abject poverty.

These cultural narratives aren’t relevant anymore. In fact they never were. When society reaches a point where it can always find money for war, but never enough to run hospitals effectively its time our fundamental world view shifted.

Spiritual gurus, people who have had near death experiences and almost every individual under hypnosis (who has been regressed into the space between incarnations) report a universal connectedness. The oneness of totality. A feeling of oneness sometimes called enlightenment is an experience available to anyone that would like a deeper understanding of themself.

When you interact with the world without duality or separation you can never feel alone. You cannot feel helpless if you can feel the implicate order unfolding. Its hard to compete or fight when there is only one (instead of two or many). You become kinder and more gentle. How differently we’d act towards our enemy if we saw the aspects of them we dislike in ourself. Connecting with oneness is living wholeheartedly. In harmony with morphic resonance of the unseen field of intelligence that surrounds us. Its a better way to live together.

Like this:

Life has its ups and downs. You get a pay rise, your kid gets picked for a rep team and your mum gets cancer. Without the troughs you can never appreciate the rarefied air of the peaks. I used to ride the waves of emotion. I was an unwitting junkie. High on life the next minute crashing down. Now I ride midships. I sense the waves but I’m not caught in them as I was when I rode at the bow.

At times you have control, or think you have control, but mostly we are pushed and pulled by forces beyond our meager comprehension. Like with mum. She thinks eating only vegetables is more extreme than being cut open by a surgeon’s knife all for a 1 in 3 survival chance. Because i love her I want to ride in on a white horse snatch control and stuff her full of leafy greens, garlic and berries that have been shown to retard cancer cell growth by 70%, but it’s not my body and it’s not my life. She’s on her journey and it’s hers alone. While we might like to interject in situations and wrestle our will across things its altogether fruitless. Better is to support, love, care and help. Inform gently and infrequently. People don’t like being told what to do and we can all understand why that is true.

If you’ve ever thought about death and dieing (and everybody should because fear of death is the main thing that stops us from really living) you may have arrived at a conclusion that our western death narrative serves us poorly. Death is transition not annihilation like we are told. Death is simply the outgrowth of a worn out spacesuit. We shed our meatsuit like the caterpillar and metamorphosize back into our natural state no longer able to play a role in this dream of life.

While we dream the here and now we should enjoy it. The good, the bad, the lateness, the disappointment, the frustration, the anger, the achievement and the euphoria. It’s all wondrous and it’s all here on display for us. At this time of the year there is pressure, stress, tragedy and drama. Move to the middle of the boat where the ride is the calmest. Step back behind your eyes and relax. Not being able to get your kid the last Lego Minecraft set is not all that big a deal. Love the ones you love, don’t bicker and fight. Dance where others fret and sweat. The dream can be a beautiful pageant if you let it be so.

Have a very Merry Christmas. Cherish those you love. Give the gift of your attention, compassion and good humour.

Like this:

There’s a podcast titled ‘Meditation is more important than your job’. While I didn’t listen to the whole thing I fundamentally agree that self understanding (and one way to gain understanding is through meditation) is a very important task that everyone having this human experience should invest some time into. It got me thinking about all the things that are more important to me than a traditional 9-5 work experience. Time with my family is more important. Already in my kids short lives I’ve missed all sorts of firsts and important experiences because I’ve been at work. On too many occasions I’ve been too tired or too distracted with work to have conversations that are important to my family. Running and riding my bike are more important to me than work. That might sound juvenile or silly but it’s true. Finishing the rebuild of our home is more important than work. Everyone needs a sanctuary that is warm, water tight and comfortable. Meeting up with my friends is also more important. Friends energise and educate me. They inspire and help me when I need advice or assistance. Being surrounded by quality people is a key to success and happiness in this life. Sleep and idleness is more important to me than work. It might sound lazy, but if I had a free choice between a day relaxing and sleeping or a day going to work it would not be a close contest. Now the interesting question is having determined that there are a number of things that are more important to me than work, why is my time so significantly unbalanced in favour of doing little of the things that are important and lots of the thing (work) that is less important to me? The answer is of course money and so is the solution. There are two paths (assuming you rule out robbing and stealing). I can work more to gain the money I need for freedom that I desire. That course is illogical because I would have to sacrifice the very freedom that I seek to gain. The alternative solution is to live simply. By reducing my desires for material gain and being clear about my priorities I can live on a small income that requires far less time committed to work. By doing so it is possible to immediately balance my time around the things that are important. It’s what I’ve always said is a critical choice in this world. Choosing meaning over money.

Share this:

Like this:

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it”

Edith Wharton

I feel like there are broadly two ways that we can operate.

The vast majority of people absorb the energy around them. Mostly this is the negative life is crap and disappointing, be scared and afraid cultural narrative promulgated by mass media and echoed by the majority of the population to make us feel small and helpless. When we operate in this mode we feed off the energy around us. Whatever it is. It flows into and back out of us and we respond and react to it. We draw from the negative charge. Life is a bitch and we want everyone around us to be as unhappy as we are. We repel people. We act selfishly and hurtfully.

A much smaller group of people generate their own energy. They project their passion outwards. Their positive energy, happiness and intent radiates from them like a shockwave to everyone and everything that they come into contact with. Like magnetism their positive energy can clash with the surrounding negative aura that has most people caught in an invisible spell.

To get radiant these people have had to run their batteries a little low to begin to produce and project their own positive power. It’s a hard thing to do in the face of such a massively negatively charged social environment. Byprogramming their own mind (rather than having their mind programmed by the mass media) they are now beacons of light that can beam brightness and lightness into the hearts of other people.

We are attracted to these types of people because we recognise they are ‘off-programme’ free spirits. Their pilot light is on. They’ve ditched autopilot to dance to their own tune. When we clash with these people it is often because we feel jealous, intimidated or fearful. We resent their directionality knowing at the same time we are neck deep in mud and misery. While they exhibit freedom and fluidity we feel trapped in circumstance and expectation and we hate it!

There is an Indian legend about a old medicine man telling a young brave about the two wolves that live within him. One wolf feeds on suffering and pain. The other feeds on happiness and harmony. These too wolves are always fighting and eventually one will win. When the young brave asks who will win the medicine man replies simply ‘the one you are feeding’.

It’s easy to figure out if you are a producer (positively charged) or a consumer (negatively charged). You just need to ask yourself whether you are sucking in suffering or are you consciously projecting your passion and happiness out to energise everyone in your emotional field?

Let me ask you one other question. Do you feel like your closest relationships (partner, friends, kids and other family members) suck your energy or do they magnify your charge and inspire you to keep forging your own life lived on your terms?